Читать книгу The Babysitter - Nancy Bush - Страница 12

Chapter Six

Cooper dropped Marissa off at her mother’s house, the house he’d once shared with Laura before their split, the house less than a mile from his parents’, now his own.

He watched as she walked up to the garage, hitching up her backpack as she pressed the numbers on the pin pad to open the door. She lifted a hand to him without turning around. He watched the door lumber upward with a few squeaks and groans—gonna have to check those springs, Haynes, make sure it’s still functioning right—then back down again before he reversed out of the drive.

He and Laura had determined to keep their split as amicable as possible for Marissa’s sake, even though there had been huge fights between them toward the end of their three-year marriage. He’d married Laura for all the wrong reasons, chief among them that it was the time when all the guys he knew were taking that trip down the aisle and Laura was eager to take the same steps. There were other reasons, too . . . chief among them being he’d liked her looks. Then a buddy of his at work, a guy about ten years older than Cooper who’d also graduated from River Glen High, Howie Eversgard, had pointed out to him, “She kinda looks like that girl from the Thrift Shop.” This observation had come about a year into Cooper’s marriage. Howie’s father haunted Theo’s Thrift Shop, as many grandparents did, buying up the gently used discards from some of River Glen’s wealthier families, who gave away their belongings rather than sell them on craigslist or other similar sites.

“The hell she does,” Cooper had growled, trying to cover up that he’d been knocked sideways a bit. But as soon as he’d heard it, he’d recognized its truth: Laura had a passing resemblance to Emma Whelan.

Howie had been undeterred. “No, man. Check it out sometime. Go to the Thrift Shop for a look-see.”

Though Cooper had attempted to shrug off Howie’s words, he’d gone to the Thrift Shop in his off hours to see the real Emma Whelan to compare. He’d learned Emma looked remarkably the same as in high school, though her face had lost its expressiveness. “Hi, Cooper,” she’d greeted him, as if there hadn’t been years in between since they’d seen each other. Her voice was flat, as smooth and uninflected as her mien, not a ripple in the water. It hurt his heart, as it had when it had happened.

That trip to the shop had also made him hyperaware of his marriage, the chinks in the armor, the little rips in the fabric. Laura looked like Emma, but she wasn’t Emma as Emma had once been. Laura was careful and a little sensitive, where Emma had been self-confident. Laura wanted to be with him twenty-four seven, where Emma had always made it clear she liked him just fine, but maybe she had better things to do. Their relationship, such as it had been, in junior high and, briefly, in high school, hadn’t really gotten off the ground. All the guys had wanted Emma, and maybe he’d gotten a little closer than most, but it hadn’t been a real relationship. He could admit that now.

Her aloofness was one of the reasons they’d all gone to scare her at her babysitting job the night of the Stillwell party.

“I’m taking over for my sister,” Emma had said breezily when Tim Merchel, whose parents had bought him a cell phone, had called her on her home phone.

“Ah, c’mon, Emma. Stillwell’s having a party.”

“Have fun,” she’d told them, hanging up.

She’d relented later, actually stopping by the party briefly before going on to her babysitting job. Race had asked her what took her so long to show up, but she’d refused to say before taking off. Her departure left Race in a bad mood and then . . . plans were made.

They all knew she babysat for the Ryerson twins.

Cooper shook the memories away as he drove back to the station. Whenever Marissa called and he was around, he tended to take off work for a few minutes to pick her up from school and drop her off. Laura expected her to walk home, though she lived over a mile from the school, but with iffy weather and a heavy backpack, Cooper kinda thought Marissa needed a little extra help sometimes. Which pissed Laura off.

“She’s my daughter,” she told him crisply time and again, usually on a phone call after she’d worked up a head of steam.

“She’s a fifteen-year-old girl with a backpack three times as heavy as it ought to be.”

“She’s not your problem anymore.”

“I’m saving her from future back surgery.”

Which was when she invariably hung up on him. Laura was angry that he’d never been committed to the marriage in the same way she had. He’d tried, but she was a “ruleser.” Everything had to be just so, and well, he didn’t fit into the mold. He’d found himself heading home from work later and later, and finally recognized he didn’t want to go home at all. Laura was a nice, friendly person in front of others, but she was quick to drop that facade in the privacy of her own home and became tyrannical when things didn’t go her way.

They’d gone to a psychologist, at Laura’s insistence, who’d said they both needed to try harder, which hadn’t been what Laura wanted to hear. She wanted complete vindication. So, no more trips to see Gwen Winkelman, which was fine with Cooper; Gwen was another River Glen alum and the less gossip about his failing marriage around town, the better, and though he trusted she wouldn’t blab about all their problems, just seeing a psychologist was enough to start a few tongues wagging.

And then they’d divorced and everyone had gasped, how had that happened? Cooper and Laura? They had the perfect marriage! How can that be?

During the split, Laura was good about not giving too much away and so was he. Irreconcilable differences. That was it. Nothing more to say. And then Cooper’s father had a stroke and his attention was diverted, completely taken up with his father through his illness and until his death a few months later. By that time, Cooper had moved out of the house he and Laura had purchased together and into the home he’d grown up in. His mother had died years earlier from breast cancer. He had no other siblings and now no wife or children. Work was all that mattered and he attacked it as if his life depended on it, which in a way, it did.

Eventually, the gossip had died down. Laura moved on and was currently dating David Musgrave, who seemed a decent-enough guy. He’d heard talk that the two of them might even move in together. They were shopping for a house in Staffordshire Estates, River Glen’s chichiest area, a development that adjoined the Stillwell property, a parcel sold to home builders by Race and Deon Stillwell’s parents before their deaths in a small plane accident.

Now Cooper pulled into the back lot of the station. Several black Ford Escapes with the River Glen Police Department’s gold ribbon sat idle. Cooper parked his own SUV, a black Ford Explorer that looked a lot like it belonged in the River Glen PD fleet, and took the short flight of steps in two bounds.

Inside, he walked down a short hall that held the break room, restrooms and a storage closet to an open area that held six desks in three groups of two, front to front. His was one of the two closest to the window and faced Howie’s. Only three of the others were ever used. Today, they were all empty. Howie and Elena Verbena were on a case, a domestic fight between a man and his wife, both of whom were currently in the hospital from the injuries they’d inflicted upon each other. Cooper had been unavailable at the call out, and the department sent whoever was closest to the incident.

The River Glen PD chief, a man who’d been appointed by the mayor, knew less than nothing about law enforcement from experience but was smart enough to stay out of the way of those who did. Hugh Bennihof had an office at the end of the squad room. The door was a glass pane, so it was possible to see when he was at his desk, except for the few times he pulled down the blinds.

Cooper had just finished writing up his notes on an investigation he’d done for a case that was going to court: a messy custody case. He was glad to be done with it. He hadn’t been impressed by either parent of the six-year-old boy.

He was now a little bit at loose ends, which made him restless. He walked to his desk but kept standing, looking out the window to the street. Seeing Jamie Whelan again had broken something loose. Something he’d thought he had under tight lock and key. Not Whelan, he realized, she’d said her last name was . . . ?

I’m Harley Woodward.

The daughter’s name was Woodward, so Jamie’s was likely to be, too. Jamie looked a lot like Emma, and yet she didn’t. He remembered her from high school. She’d been skinnier, but not by much. Her hair had been blonder, he thought. Now it was a light brown. She’d had a quirky smile back then, like she was embarrassed, or a fish out of water. He hadn’t noticed that today. She’d been poised and . . . careful.

She was supposed to babysit that night.

Cooper had given the attack on Emma a lot of thought over the years. It was the event that had spurred him to go into law enforcement. He’d had an uncle who was a River Glen cop, now long retired, and he’d harangued the man for answers, begged him, damn near threatened him, to find out what had happened, but there were no clues that went anywhere. If Emma could help, then maybe, his uncle had told Cooper over and over again, but it became clear that was never going to happen.

His cell phone rang and he clicked on. “Yeah,” he answered Marissa.

“Mom won’t let me go to the mixer tonight! I can’t believe it!” she cried, practically in tears. “I have plans! I have friends!”

“The mixer?”

“At the school. It’s like music and stuff, and it’s the Halloween one early because already the school won’t let us do Halloween. It’s so unfair! It’s just so unfair!”

“Why won’t your mom let you go?”

“I don’t know. Can you talk to her?”

He knew better than to try to get between Laura and her daughter. Boy, did he know better. “Find out what her reasons are, and maybe then you can work it out with her.”

“You won’t help me?” She moaned, as if her life were destroyed.

“Find out,” said Cooper.

She moaned again and hung up. Ten minutes later, Laura’s number popped up on his cell.

“I don’t want her to go alone,” Laura said without preamble in a hard tone when Cooper clicked on. “There are drugs at the school. I don’t want her to be a part of it.”

“Drugs? This is something you heard?”

“Yes! There are drugs.”

Knowing he was putting too fine a point on it based on the tone of her voice, Cooper nevertheless waded in. “Do you mean kids are using during the day? Or just this evening?”

“Does it matter?” Her ire was rising.

It wasn’t that he was purposely making light of the issue. He didn’t doubt that a certain percentage of kids were experimenting with drugs. It was what happened at every school. What he was objecting to was Laura’s capacity to come up with excuses to win an argument or have her way, whether she believed what he was saying or not.

And he didn’t believe Marissa and her friends were users.

He said, “Marissa goes to school during the day, so the drugs are there when she’s there . . . ? But she can’t go to the school tonight because the drugs will be there?”

“I don’t think tonight will be chaperoned the same way,” she delivered through her teeth. “Unless you want to go there? Be the policeman for all those teens? You want to do that?”

Hell no.

“Sure,” he said. “Just let me know when I should pick Marissa up.”

She hung up on him.

* * *

“We’re not going to spread Mom’s ashes tonight,” Jamie said as she threw together a peanut butter sandwich for Harley and slid it onto the table.

“Good,” Harley expelled with relief.

“I’ve got to pick up Emma at five and then you’re going to that party. . . .”

“Mixer.” Harley fell on the sandwich like a ravenous wolf. “I didn’t eat lunch,” she admitted around a huge bite that was obviously sticking to the roof of her mouth.

“I gave you money,” Jamie reminded her, pouring her daughter a glass of tap water. That was one thing about Oregon. The water was good.

“I just didn’t like what they had.”

Jamie held back further comment. She’d been the same way. Starving herself all day for similar reasons. But why couldn’t growing up, school, be better for Harley? That was all she wanted.

Harley rolled an eye at her. “Maybe you and Emma can just spread the ashes without me.”

“No. I called my father. We changed the date. He and Debra are coming over Sunday afternoon.”

Harley put down the glass of water and stared at Jamie. “I thought you hated him.”

“Hate’s a pretty strong word.”

“Yeah? Well . . . ?”

“Emma and I blamed him for leaving Mom, yes. It was a tough time and he didn’t handle it well. We all thought Debra was a passing thing, but she wasn’t. I wasn’t sure Dad knew Mom died, so I called him this afternoon and left a message on his phone, and he called me back.”

She’d worked up the courage to even phone her father, calling herself all kinds of a coward for making something that should be so easy, so hard. She’d been relieved to leave a message, and when he’d phoned back she’d been in her bedroom and had answered with trepidation.

“Hey . . . Dad,” she’d said diffidently.

“Hi, honey,” he answered with false warmth.

His tone. She remembered that tone so well. He just couldn’t pull off sincerity. It had spurred her to bluntly give him the news about Mom, which he had somehow already heard, but when she’d explained that they were spreading her ashes in lieu of a memorial service, he’d been eager to drop the whole thing.

“We’re doing it this Sunday,” Jamie had decided that moment. She didn’t really care if he was there or not, but it had pissed her off how relieved he’d sounded that he couldn’t make the event.

Apparently picking up on her anger, he’d finally said, “Well, maybe Debra and I can come. What time?”

She almost asked him not to bring Debra. Nobody liked her. Nobody wanted her there. But Debra had been with her father for so many years that it seemed churlish and pointless to say no.

Now, Harley said, “I don’t even know what he looks like.”

“You’re not alone. None of us have seen him in years.”

“Has . . . uh, Marissa texted yet?” Harley tried to disguise the hopeful tone in her voice, but wasn’t completely successful. Jamie found herself praying Marissa was as nice as everyone was saying. She hoped to God Harley wasn’t left in the lurch on her first day of school.

“Not yet.”

Her cell gave off its incoming text tone at that moment. Harley jumped up and demanded, “Where’s your cell?”

“I’ve got it right here.” Jamie plucked it from her purse and placed it on the counter. She gave her daughter a look that said, Hold your horses.

“Is it Marissa?”

“No, it’s Ick . . . it’s the lady I was talking with at the school . . . Tyler’s mom.” She fished Vicky’s card out of the side pocket of her purse. “Vicky Barnes, uh, Stapleton.”

“Wha’d she say?”

“Well, I’m going out with her tonight, while you’re at the mixer.”

Harley frowned. “Really? Why? What about Emma?”

“She can stay by herself. My mom worked nights, pretty much always.”

“You don’t want to take care of her, do you?”

Jamie drew a breath. “It’s all a change. For you, too. And I’m glad, and surprised, that you’re so okay with the move.”

Harley physically pulled back, as if Jamie had trod into her space. “You’re not both coming to the mixer, right?”

“Not on your life.”

Twenty minutes later, Marissa texted: will pick Harley up at 6, k?

Harley practically yanked the phone out of Jamie’s hands and sent back a thumb’s-up emoji. “When am I getting a phone?” she demanded for about the billionth time.

“I don’t know,” answered Jamie. Again. “Keep asking and it might not happen at all.”

“So, you are thinking about it?” Harley perked up, hearing what she wanted to hear.

“A day hardly goes by that it’s not brought up about six times.”

Harley narrowed her eyes, as she often did at her mother’s sarcasm, but then she raced upstairs to her room to get ready.

I need to go back, to remember how it started. I need to recall every detail. To think through each piece. It’s important. It keeps the path I walk on straight.

I sit in the full dark. I have been sitting here a long time. Days . . . maybe a week?

I don’t want to hurt anyone, but these women . . .

They shouldn’t do the things they do. They need to back off, or be made to.

The newspaper clippings are on my computer, which sits on the table in front of me. If I open the file I’ll read about what was reported, but not what happened.

I didn’t hurt the babysitter, but she needed to be hurt, needed to be stopped.

For some reason my mind is full of images of dolls. They’re enhanced like Barbie but they’re not her. They’re sluts. Zeroed in on men. Any man. Whether married or not. An army of vicious, self-gratifying females.

I breathe hard, pulling my energy inward, needing to calm myself. Not now, I warn myself. Not ever, if I can help it.

But can I help it?

The doll images slowly coalesce into one face. One I knew all along. The one that started it all . . .

Emma . . .